Saturday, December 10, 2011

FAERIE?: A small data-set indicating that folkloric entities or something very like them could be real, Part Seven

The Leprechauns are at it again tonight, folks; it took this side of forever to get the blog pictures to load [one loaded twice without being asked to]. Perhaps they're driven a little nuts by the Lisa Roy picture of the pretty winged fairy, but "man up, guys!", well "leprechaun up" and get back to Ireland and ask her for a date, leaving my computer [or this blogsite] alone, if you please!

So, if the Little Folks will allow, I'll try another entry in our series.

The picture above is of my least favorite UFO?/Fairy?/ what-in-the-hell? incident in the literature. My only intellectual foxhole is to just hope that it didn't happen.

1979, Rowley Regis, UK: 7am on a dark morning, and the husband already gone to work. The lady of the house saw an orange light in her garden which turned white. She heard a "zzzeee- zzzeee- zzzeee" sound and three small somethings flew past her through the open door. Both she and her dog seemed "frozen". Fear passed and she felt an unusual calm, very reassuring. She then seemed to float into the next room, where three very small beings were tugging at the christmas tree. They were 3'-4' foot tall, and dressed in silvery-green tunics with silver buttons. They had pointy hats surmounted by something like lamps. [Alien wardrobe stylists doing a poor job of imitating Puck's Jack-o'Lantern?]. They had transparent fishbowls over their heads, which featured chalky white skin, no noticeable ears, or noses, and large jewel-like black eyes ... great. They had beautiful rounded rainbow-colored wings, made up of dazzling dots [like an extraterrestrial pointillistic painter, I suppose]. They outshone any Earthly color in their vividness.

They spoke to the lady in a unified threesome choir. They asked about many things in the house, said they were not from Earth, but visited many places here. They were a bit miffed that no one here seemed to want to listen to them [but as she said: "their talk tended to religion", that shouldn't surprise many of us --- ask some of our own door-to-door evangelists]. They asked for water, elevated a metal tray without touching it, and picked mince pies off it. They were quite disapproving when she lit up a cigarette, and left when an 8' long "luminous plastic" miniature ship showed up.

The lady's reaction: she felt "blessed". As someone trying to make sense out of these things, my reaction differs, like 180-degrees. This thing has everything in it that you don't want: winged things who look like aliens and act like contactee conversants. A craft too small for three three-&-a-half foot tall beings whose getaway isn't even described, and a fine mince pie to relegate the whole thing to Joe Simonton "pancake" country. This entire episode is either pure baloney or a deliberately hashed together display by whichever of our two groups of clowns [ETs or gnomish mischief-makers] is having a good hoot at our expense.

Well, sometimes silence is golden, so I'll move on.

1965, Greenville, TX: A wife and husband were watching TV and he, as usual fell asleep. She helped lug him to his bed and decided to lie down herself. Unfortunately for her sleep plans, there in their doorway stood a little man. He had a fishbowl for a helmet, but [thankfully?] looked human. His complexion was ruddy but fairly normal all around. His suit was a gray "spacesuit" with zippers everywhere. In his hand he held a crystal ball. The lady felt that she was receiving reassuring communication from him but not verbally.

She tried to shake her husband awake more than once, but he was out-of-it. The being seemed unsure or at least unhurried as all it would do is look at her, then at the ball, then at her, etc. From another room, her sleeping daughter coughed. The being turned to look towards that room, setting off the "Mother-Bear" instinct and she roused and began rising from the bed. Within two of her steps, the being vanished.

Was this a fairy getting back at the aliens for imitating them at Rowley Regis? I jest of course...I think ...... don't I?

1977, near Corozal, Puerto Rico: An old farmer was enjoying a mid-afternoon lazy view, when he was interrupted by a sound and a flash-of-lightning. At its end was a "long blue candle" resting on the ground. The "candle" approached and came to rest beside him. It then turned into a little dwarf [groan....]. Yep, three foot tall, long pointy ears, round ugly face, big nose with ape-like nostrils, small mouth with full lips. His skin was muddy-colored, and he wore a jacket with a little tie. I mean, really, you gotta love it.

He had something hanging around his neck which he began to use like a stethoscope [knees, feet, ears, chest, back, temples], and he even checked carefully inside the farmer's mouth. [One wonders what was going on in the farmer's head during all this "attention", but maybe he had just taken out an extraterrestrial health plan]. [Sorry, folks, but sometimes a bit of one's own silliness is sanity's only defense].

The being stepped back, then, and informed our stalwart witness that he [the being not the farmer... but I'm beginning to doubt any assumptions at this moment] was an extraterrestrial and how nice he thought Puerto Rico was. He then, without bothering to change back into a blue candle, zoomed off through the branches of the avocado trees. At least he made the same sound that he had when he was flying around as a candle.

For what it's worth, because enquiring minds want to know, he then had a [we guess] human doctor give him a physical and was pronounced in good health.

You know, I'm not even going to try to explain those last three incidents.

Instead, I'm washing my hands of them and going on to friendlier territory: Big Fairy Black Dogs. AND, just to get one thing straight: I think that the Pookhas have gotten a bad rap. At least in gentle old Ireland, they seem like congenial companions on the road, indeed.

I don't know where the vicious black hound of hell comes to play in this [the ancient illustration to the left is of a case which claims that a "blasphemer" was turned into a black dog --- and that might give us a hint of another bending-out-of-shape of old concepts by an unforgiving "christian" over-culture], but if there are authentic "bad" black dog fairy encounters, they seem to be England's problem, not Ireland's.

"My" pookhas are Diarmuid MacManus'. He has seven cases in his super book. All of the events were told him by persons to whom he had real personal contact and therefore high credibility. In the midst of all the rest of this craziness, the Irish Pookha is an Island of high strangeness that brings a lot of confidence in its reality to me.

MacManus' collected tales are all very similar. So I can get away with telling just one in some detail, and you can go buy the book and have a really good time reading of fairy encounters of all types and of rare believability. This case occurred in 1952 in Redcross, County Wicklow, Ireland. An Irish lass [a friend of MacManus'] was walking home on a mid-summer's night at 10:30pm. She was returning from the neighboring farm, where she had borrowed some buttermilk. It was still light at that season, and the night was quiet. She heard behind her a soft padding of feet. Almost at once, a huge jet-black dog had come up beside her and was striding along at her pace. Not knowing what else to do, she continued to walk resolutely towards her home.

After a while, she began to feel that the dog was no threat at all, and was merely friendly. She tentatively reached over to give it a pat ... but could feel nothing. Thinking that she had somehow misjudged, she tried again ... nothing, and the dog strode on. Now thoroughly puzzled, she concentrated fully on this petting task, and realized that her hand must be passing right through the shape alongside. The dog then moved out ahead about fifty yards. It paused, turned it's head to the left, and .... vanished. Completely astonished and not a little afraid, she hurried home [now close-by], and told her family. To her surprise, they all readily believed her as they all already knew of cases of these things.

No one can say why a Black Fairy Dog would act this way. One guess is that they are being protectors. From what? Who knows who or what may have had mayhem in mind that mid-summer Irish night, who never came into our young lady's path because of the presence of a very big black dog walking alongside.

Idling away my hours, I made a little map of where MacManus' pookhas manifested. It's on the left. Since with one exception the pookhas were ranging sort of along a straight line, I wondered about fault lines. Fault lines are not my favorite theory for trying to explain all such stuff, but intellectual honesty requires an open mind. The geological map of Ireland does have many interesting features, tis true. But the faults align themselves at almost the most wrong angle to match these points. Ireland is like a stacked cake whose layers stack northwest to southeast roughly. I looked a gravitational anomalies also [see the map below], but they don't fit either [most + anomalies ringing the Atlantic coast, and there being no obvious general pattern with the inland sightings].

I believe that this old folkloric critter is still with us today. MacManus' tales go into the 50s and, while I was looking for something to use as illustration for this post, I accidentally bumped into an article on a website about the subject which was followed by several posts. I read them and several were personal accounts of recent encounters with our [usually-interpreted] friendly beast. They were tales told briefly and without self-indulgence, and seemed to be straight stories from folks who were believing what they were saying. If any of them were to be investigated and found to have sufficient strangeness within, then such tales would bring us right up to the present.

Just for the amusement factor: One element of any Big Black Dog tale needs careful scrutiny if one is to bypass the "it was just a really big dog" hypothesis. That is because there are some REALLY big dogs. I included one non-black dog in the collage, because it is the Irish Wolfhound, who in the right evening lighting conditions just might look dark enough. Fortunately for our leading hypothesis, when the Big Fairy Pooch vanishes right in the middle of the road, that ends the particular difficulty.

6 comments:

My younger son -- now a fine young man who teaches at a high school in South Dakota's Indian Country -- has sworn all his life that when he was a tiny kid still in the crib, a little flying man with wings buzzed through the bedroom for a period of time. He tried to awaken his parents, lost in sleep one door away, but failed to bring his mother and me into consciousness. How often do we hear that one? Come to think of it, see above.

My late father's meeting with a black dog in La Crosse, Wisconsin, in the early 1920s has been related in a book or two of mine. My own encounter (on three occasions) with a phantom quadruped in our front lawn in the summer of 2000 appears in my "Among the Anomalies" essay in a 2005 issue of the Journal of Scientific Exploration.

In my own emotional response I felt no fear, perhaps because the experiences were so odd and unexpected that the brain is so busy trying to conjure up a normal explanation it doesn't have any juice left over to generate bejesus scaring out of. Then again, in fairness, none of these guys was Mothman, my definition of the scariest critter of 'em all. I doubt my ol' ticker would survive a sighting.

I'm jealous. But at least I had a nice old close encounter of the first kind UFO domed disk cruise slowly by at about football field distance --- kindly completely unthreatening. Still, it would be great fun to see the fairies troop by sometime. Not so sure I'd have the guts to say anything to them though. Not a single member of my "anomalistically-blessed" family has has a folklore entity nor a cryptozoological [which I'm beginning to suspect are the same thing] encounter. Lots of clairvoyance and poltergeists and apparitions and UFOs and other wonderful stuff, but no "critters". We did own a very friendly big dog once though; maybe she was a good substitute.

b"hWhen I was about 16 ('70) I had an unforgettable dream "similar" to the incidents you are posting about that seemed too real. That's why I asked if you might professor, sometime down the road, blog on states of consciousness and what we might be able to receive as input.

Prior to that experience, at age 13 ('67) or so, while very wide awake, a luminescent white basketball-sized orb suddenly materialized on a wood floor between my little sister sitting on the floor and myself sitting on a sofa. We were about six feet apart in the living room. The orb sat for about a two-count, then moved to my left about six feet still on the floor and passed under a wooden bureau with ~ 4 inch clearance, and through metal grates of a ventilation duct. I never bought into the high-energy "plasma" ball as the universal explanation since in this case nothing was scorched.

The strange dream: upstairs in my bed, suddenly I am "aware" that a "UFO" has landed outside in the yard. I look out the window and see it. It looks like about a 12 foot diameter metallic disk. Then, suddenly, a foot and a half tall creature appears inside my room on the window sill right next to the head of my bed. Yep, not a little frightened. The creature looked something like a living Kewpie doll, with a large malevolent smile, and a really goofy single carrot-sized antenna on his "head." I got the impression that this "thing" was mischievious and not a little dangerous. After a few moments the thing disappeared and I got the impression the UFO was gone. I awoke, frightened, and cautiously looked out the window to the yard - nothing there.

I also had about seven "sleep paralysis" episodes in the 1970's, though I did not know of such a term then, nor "abduction." I was simply paralyzed and strangled, and sensed an evil personality. As a new Theist, I simply struggled to call to Christ, and as soon as I could articulate "Je" as in Jesus, I would instantly be released, and would gulp in air.

I do believe there are plenty of CE's of all kinds, and physical trace incidents as well. I was a military radar tech and never saw a UFO, but I don't doubt that cases like the RB-47 and the Teheran F-4's indicate evidentiary events.

Thank you for your reporting of your personal experiences. It would be quite off-base of me to attempt to critique them, as, as they say, you were there not I.

Just as to contribute a little something: your BOL experience sounds like a good one as is surely not "ball lightning". There are many BOL experiences which support your own. There is always, in these cases, there is a chance of the object being a very poorly understood "non-conscious" physical phenomenon, which to me would still be quite exciting.

As to the vivid dream: you were at the optimal age for things like sleep paralysis "Old Hags" and powerful symbolic dreams. That's all I can say.

Ex-policeman and publisher of the 'Haunted Skies Project,' John Hanson, has confirmation from the superintendent who oversaw the case and has listened to the interview tape. According to Hanson's recollections and research, Hingley noticed a bright light above the house before anything else. To compound the oddness, her next-door neighbour corroborated the exit of a flying object from the garden.

What actually happened within the walls of Jean Hingley's suburban semi is a head-scratcher. A multiple-witness UFO sighting clambers upon a unicycle and pedals away to 'Out Procter.'

Yes. I think that what evidence we have points to some kind of actual anomaly too --- otherwise I wouldn't have lumbered everyone with using the thing as a focus point. But it still is a pain-in-the-patoot to relate to the "Technological Flying Object" vs "Folkloric Entity" piles, which seem so disparate. Maybe we'll come up with some soft hypotheses for who is messing around in the other's business as we proceed. I've been Out Proctor so long it's beginning to look normal to me. [NOT a good sign].